That's because the two-hander you'd want is in the Terrace of Eternal Spring, obviously.

"Reminds me of a dog. You stare at it while it's playing outside, running around in a circle, then stopping up, wagging with a wide "grin", jumping around until you call for the dog. Then it lowers its tail because it think it's done something bad and then you throw the ball, seeing the tail go straight into the air in bliss! ^^" - Gehco

There are no caster dps weapons in heart of fear either. You have to look at hof+terrace as a tier. You're not expected to be able to fully gear in only one of them.

yeah but the item design is pretty stupid nonetheless. Ever seen a dps warrior do damage without a weapon? I haven't. Item Gaps are just too big from 463 to 496 to just offer one 2-hand weapon before terrace. It has never ever been that hard to equip a melee dps for raiding 10-man heroics, if you dont have the opportunity to go 25-man for loots. Conquest Points for PVP weapons was just reached the last week, and that only is if you're crazy dedicated, farming your conquest pvp stuff on top of everything else EVERY week since release. Not everyone has great drop luck.

We're running with 3 plate dps/tanks, trying to do some 10-man Progress. We have not yet had a single Drop of 1-hand or 2-hand strength weapon. Only melee weapon we had was a agi pole for our feral. That's it. Across LFR and 10-man, including Bonus Rolls every single ID. And not everyone has the time or the motivation to do pvp atop of all the pve stuff, in order to be able to do pve progression. And its not like HoF hasn't got some tight enrages if your run with low equiped melee dps.

Like I said, just totally stupid design.

EDIT: Casters are just fine without a weapon. They can basically deal damage from every other INT Item. Melee DPS can't. At least not with such a scaling factor.

yeah but the item design is pretty stupid nonetheless. Ever seen a dps warrior do damage without a weapon? I haven't. Item Gaps are just too big from 463 to 496 to just offer one 2-hand weapon before terrace. It has never ever been that hard to equip a melee dps for raiding 10-man heroics, if you dont have the opportunity to go 25-man for loots. Conquest Points for PVP weapons was just reached the last week, and that only is if you're crazy dedicated, farming your conquest pvp stuff on top of everything else EVERY week since release. Not everyone has great drop luck.

We're running with 3 plate dps/tanks, trying to do some 10-man Progress. We have not yet had a single Drop of 1-hand or 2-hand strength weapon. Only melee weapon we had was a agi pole for our feral. That's it. Across LFR and 10-man, including Bonus Rolls every single ID. And not everyone has the time or the motivation to do pvp atop of all the pve stuff, in order to be able to to pve progression.

Like I said, just totally stupid design.

EDIT: Casters are just fine without a weapon. They can basically deal damage from every other INT Item. Melee DPS can't. At least not with such a scaling factor.

Eh, normal modes should be clearable with a mix of 463/489 gear. Yes, melee scale very well with the weapon, but it shouldn't be game-breaking to go without the weapon in normal modes. Heroic modes are where it matters, certainly, but then the intended progression is this:

By the time you get into MSV heroic, you should have had plenty of opportunities for an ilevel 489 or 496 weapon to drop. Sure, some guilds have been able to get into MSV heroic early, but that's due to the gating system. It's not really intentional or optimal to go into MSV heroic before HoF/Terrace normal.

We also can't really argue that melee should 'always' get their weapons early in an instance due to this class design. That seems pretty unfair. There have been times where a melee weapon dropped from the first boss of an instance (first boss of Firelands, for example), and there are times when they only drop from later bosses. Got to mix things up to keep the game interesting.

EDIT: Casters are just fine without a weapon. They can basically deal damage from every other INT Item. Melee DPS can't. At least not with such a scaling factor.

You've never seen that huge chunk of spellpower on weapons last couple of years no? Only like what, one third of total spellpower of casters? Casters scale amazing with their weapon, and it's also by far their biggest upgrade in terms of gearing to get.
Mage/warlocks also only have 1 option between the 2 raids, and I wouldn't be surprised if there's other specs. You're not special.

Except that weapons have a crazy amount of SP on them... In 480 gear, my 463 weapon is still providing 5152 out of my 19k SP. I'm a healer and gemming spirit, so a caster would have slightly more SP if gemming int, but you still can't say that the caster's weapon isn't a big deal. Blizzard specifically tossed a lot of SP on weapons so it would be the most important upgrade for a caster, just as it is for melee.

You're missing my point. I'm not saying casters shouldn't have weapons, I'm saying caster can manage good dps without a weapon, because they have enough gear possibilites on the other slots. Cause they scale differently. You're right, a caster gets a push from a weapon. But they are still able to do decent dps without one. Melees arent. But thats not the point. It can very well be extended to healers and casters aswell.

I'm not saying they should integrate 1230 weapons on the first 3 bosses. I'm just saying the way they did it, its just fail designed. There needs to be a possibility to skip that gap - maybe integrate a caster and a melee weapon with an itemlevel of 478 oder 480 you can buy from one of the faction vendors. Lets say shado pan revered. Or Golden Lotus exalted.

Changing the intended Progression order by delaying the release of new raid zones, without fixing the item design, is just messed up. Thats my point.

as a warlock that would if possible primarily play demo, and the fact that the only caster weapon in the for-seeable future is a wand.... im sad too

but i have to agree, weapon is much more important for mellee. if your in 380 ilvl with a lvl 10 white weapon as mellee, you will not do any dps at all. a caster will still be able to do soemthing. hell a caster can dps without a weapon equipped! go test it. dps a dummy for 5min, then un-equip your weapon and dps again. casters do not need weapons anywhere near what a mellee does

As a melee 2h let me say it annoys me to no end that we have so few options this tier.

We have a sword very early on (Elegon) and an axe at the very end (Terrace). Nothing inbetween and NO MACES (cos fuck Alliance PvE racials...). It's kind of lacking compared to previous tiers (we had all 3 in 11, 12 and 13).

It means that until Terrace is out, I only have 1 shot at a weapon per week (2 if you count LFR) and that's just poor. It feels like I'm being held back by RNG more than ever before.

The "entry level" (476) Epic weapons have been scattered as rare loot through the Heroic Dungeons (eg before raiding progression), that is why they don't appear until the end of the raiding progression and when they do, they're Sha-Touched and pretty decent.

I'm not saying they should integrate 1230 weapons on the first 3 bosses. I'm just saying the way they did it, its just fail designed. There needs to be a possibility to skip that gap - maybe integrate a caster and a melee weapon with an itemlevel of 478 oder 480 you can buy from one of the faction vendors. Lets say shado pan revered. Or Golden Lotus exalted.

The "entry level" (476) Epic weapons have been scattered as rare loot through the Heroic Dungeons (eg before raiding progression), that is why they don't appear until the end of the raiding progression and when they do, they're Sha-Touched and pretty decent.

Edit: Added Ilevel

There are alot of weapons in Mogu'shan Vaults, even for those who has weapons in Heroics. Hunters has one in Setting Sun and Will of the Emperor and the upgrade is in Terrace of Endless Springs :P

allright you can ran lfr use your bonus loot and do it on normal mode again so you will 4 chances every week for a weapon upgrade, if you can´t kill elegon in ten men normalemode, dont try to achieve the heroic kills